Optical Rotation with a Polarimeter

A polarimeter measures the optical rotation of a sample. Optical rotation is the amount that a sample turns polarized light. This makes the instrument useful for studying substances that are optically active.

Optically active samples rotate the plane of polarized light in one of two directions. A...

Polarimeters are widely used in organic and analytical chemistry to assess the purity of a chemical product and investigate its properties.

Polarimeters detect the presence of enantiomers: mirror-image variants of a compound that may have wildly divergent biological activities. Distinguishing between enantiomers is critical in many applica...